Literary Onomastics Studies
Volume 12
Article 14
1985
Name-Play and Internationalism in Shakespearean
Tragedy
Frederick M. Burelbach
The College at Brockport
Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/los
Recommended Citation
Burelbach, Frederick M. (1985) "Name-Play and Internationalism in Shakespearean Tragedy," Literary Onomastics Studies: Vol. 12,
Article 14.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/los/vol12/iss1/14
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LOS 137
NAME-PLAY AND INTERNATIONALISM
IN SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY
Frederick M. Burelbach
State University of New York
College at Brockport
A reader who leafs through substantial numbers o1
Eli.zabethan and Jacobean plays can observe that character
names tend to follow setting.
If the setting is France,
the names are French, if Italy, Italian, and so on.
Exceptions occur primarily in
four waysa
(1) characters
in the plot who come from other countries are generally
named appropriately to their homeland; (2) some names
are Anglicized to an extent, presumably for the convenience
of audiences; ())some names are given a classical, Latin
form, consistent with the practice of certain authors of
learned books who published under Latinizations of their
native names; (4) comic characters in serious plays are
frequently given English names, like the Robin and Rafe
who appear in Doctor Faustus imitating the magician's
conjurations.
The rule. however, in serious plays is
consistency between the nationality of the character and
the name accorded that character.
Shakespeare seems to
be unique in his deviation from this rule, particularly
in
his tragedies set in Italy and Denmark.
For instance, Romeo and Juliet is set in Verona,
with a scene in Mantua, but of the characters who appear
LOS 138
in the play only three have undoubtedly Italian-sounding
namess Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio, and even these
three are less "real" names than Italiatlated charactonyms.
Romeo is " Rome" with an "-o," Mercutio is "Mercury" made
to sound Italian, and Benvolio is Italian for "Well-wisher. "
The names (drawn from the sources, not invented by Sr�ke­
speare) provide us significant clues to the characters.
Another name, Angelica, the name of either the Nurse or
Lady Capulet (the context at IV, iv, 5 makes it unclear)
could well be Italian, but it could equally adorn a woman
of any European country.
Of the other characters' names,
five are French (Capulet, Montague, Tybalt, Juliet, and
Rosaline), two are classical (Escalus and Paris), and the
remaining fourteen are English.
Of the fourteen characters
with English names, ten fit into the previously mentioned
exception; they are names of comic servantsa Peter, Sampson,
Gregory, Susan Grindstone, Nell, Anthonie, Potpan, and the
musicians Simon Gatling, Hugh Rebick, and James Soundpost.
Two 0T.hers are also servants but not in comic roless Abram
and Balthasar (it coul�, of course, be objected that these
are not really English names, but they have certainly been
more thoroughly naturalized than, say, Benvolio).
The
remaining two are Friar Lawrence and Friar John, the
Franciscan monks whose delayed message precipitates the
tragic conclusion.
Besides these names, several others
appear in the play, mostly Italian and mostly in the list
LOS 139
of guests invited to the Capulets' partya Lucio, Tyberio,
Petruchio, Utruvio, Placentio, Sr. Valentio, County Anselmo,
Sr. Martino, Lucentio, Cozin Capulet, Helena, Livia, and
Valentine; Juliet's Nurse refers twice to her daughter
Susan. 1
Concerning these additional names I will say
nothing except that they show Shakespeare's fecundity
(they are not in the sources) and apparent desire to give
an Italian flavoring to the play, which makes it all the
more surprising that he would accept from his sources or
invent on his own so many non-Italian names.
It must
also be said that, although the play is onomastically
rich, most of the names are uttered very seldom.
Escalus,
for instance, is called only Prince in the text and stage
directions• Sampson, Abram, and Balthasar are named only
in a few speech-prefixes: and Lady Capulet is usually
only " Lady" in speech-prefixes.
On the other hand, the
names of Romeo and Tybalt, particularly, are repeated
so often as almost to form an incantation.
Of the names of characters who actually appear in
the play, all but thos€ of Benvolio and the servants are
drawn from Arthur Brooke's Tragicall Histor� of Romeus
and Juliet, from William Painter's translation for his
Palace of Pleasure of Pierre Boiastuau's additions to
3elleforest's Histoires Tragiques extraictes des Oeuvres
italiens de Bandel, or from Bandello's Novelle.
2
Since
names like Capulet and Friar Lawrence already appear in
LOS 140
Brooke (unlike the Cappelletti and Lorenzo of Luigi da
Porto's earlier Istoria novellamente ritrovata di due
Nobill Amanti), so that the mixture of nationalities
pre-exists Shakespeare's play, we would be unwise to
draw too many inferences from Shakespeare's medley of
names, but some notes can be made.
For instance,
Shakespeare accepts Brooke's Peter (although he gives
the name to the Nurse's servant, not Romeo's, possibly
for the sake of the bawdy pun) and rejects Painter's
Pietro for the same character.
However, he rejects
Brooke' s Romeus in favor of Painter's (and Bandello's
and da Porte's) Romeo.
Shakespeare may have thought
the name Romeo was more romantic or mor.e Italian, and
he may have wished to emphasize the social distance
between Romeo and the noble class of Paris and Escalus
(although the name Escalus appears only in the dramatis
oersonae) . '
If
we take the added English names of the
comic and not-so-comic servants as falling into an estab­
lish�d dramatic convention, then Shakespeare's international
naming in Romeo and Juliet may tell us only that in this
early play he was following sources or conventions.
However, if we note that the usual dramatic practice
was to keep names consistent with nationality and that
Romeo and Juliet is unusual as an Elizabethan play in
wedding comedy and tragedy, we might find it more interesting.
Although many novelle existed on the subject of ill-starred
LOS 141
love, theatre convention held that love was a fit subject
for comedy, but tragedy demand@d sterner stuff, like ambi­
tion and revenge.
A revenge mot�� is present in Romeo and
Juliet, but the story turns basically on the boy-meets-girl
situation standard for Terentian comedy and contains many
other features ol comedy' scenes of jesting and roman��c
love, the wrathful father and the trick to circumvent hin,
the pantaloon and comic nurse.
As a stage vehicle, the
play is clearly an experiment in its time, suggesting that
Shakespeare had the confidence to do something unusual.
Consequently, the unusual mixture of names in this play
may have more significance than a mere adherence to
sources.
Concerning the meanings of these names, much has
already been said, esnecially by Murray J. Levi th in \'/hat's
in Shakespeare's Names (Hamden, CTa Archon Books, 1978).
I would like to add just a few comments concerning the
names of the servants Sampson, Gregory, Abram, and
�alth��ar.
r.nvith
and
others have already noted that
these names are ludicro,sly grandiose for servants, and
further that they are associated with religious figures.
But if we look at the names more carefully we can see other
comic connotations.
Sampson, for instance, had already
been degraded from being a Biblical destroyer of Philistines
to being a domestic killer of mice; the name Samson's post
was given to
a
device used in a mousetrap, with a notchtd
top from which a peg releases to drop a box over the
LOS 142
mouse (0. E. D.).
Sampson also echoes samsodden, meaning
half-cooked or half-baked (O.E.D. ), a fitting association
for this impetuous servant of the Ca�ulets.
according to Chaucer s Pardoner, "Samson
•
drunken man makes through his nose. 3
••
Finally,
is the sound a
A director might
do well to heed this implication when the play is act��.
As for Gregory, neither his position nor his manners (nor,
probably in a� Elizabethan production using apprentices,
hi:": :;tature) su.it him to be the namesake of .lJope (and Saint)
Gregory the Great nor Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the
Gregorian calendar is named.
But other Gregories are more
appropriate' the barber in the Strand who invented a wig
called a gregorian (O.E.D. cites Florio, 1598) and (though
probably too late for our purposes) Gregory 3randon, a
common hangmar. of London in the reign of James I, after
whom a han��n is called a gregory (O.E.D. ) .
In Massinger's
�>lay The Old Law, a Gregory was a " gallant" (IIJ, ii)
�n0
the Q.E.D. also P,ives gregory as the name of an old
gC�.me,
;ui;
.ve
ne�d not stop there.
" Gregary" and " gregal"
are both words wit� pe-.q grees back to Shakespeare's time,
meaning "pertaining to the common herd, undistinguished."
One Q.E.D. citation is particularly apta "When once his
flesh is tickled with lust, he groweth tame, gregal and
loving, " said Topsell in his Four-Footed Beasts ( 1607)
•
In �en Jonson's Volpone, the dramatis personae lists
"Grege"=mob, and in Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay
LOS 14 3
the character Miles uses "gregis" to refer to crowd (II, iv)
and "greges" to mean people (III, ii).
In 1611 Cotgrave
defined gregues as meaning galligaskins or breeches, and
� has many old meanings, all relevanta a diminutive
person or dwarf, a short-legged hen, a small eel, a merry
person (as in "merry grig" or "merry Greek"), and to
irritate or annoy.
So when casting this character, a
director might look for a short, bandy-legged fellow,
with a common, annoying manner and the pretensions of
someone acting above his station.
Can you imagine the
comic effect of Shakespeare's company casting boy appren­
tices in these roles with talk of swashing blows and
taking maidenheads?
It seems to have been traditional
to cast young boys in such roles; in Peele's Endymion,
for instance, pages with the grandiose names of Samias,
Dares, and Epiton are mocked for their diminutive stature
(scene iii).
Under the names Abram (Montague's servant) and
Baltha.aar (Homeo's servant) we can see more than allusions
to the Old and New Test8ments.
man
An Abram-man or Abraham­
was a cant term for a madman or someone who pretended
to be mad in order to beg money.
The name originated from
the Abraham wing of Bethlehem Hospital or Bedlam.
In the
play, Abram appears only briefly in the Act I skirmish
with Sampson and Gregory, but the name may again give an
acting clue.
Balthasar is the one who brings to Romeo
LOS 144
the false news of Juliet's death but who brings to Escalus
at the end of the play the true news of Romeo's suicide.
The irony is not so much in naming a servant after one of
the three Magi but in the ironic role that 3althasar plays.
Named after a truth-seeker, he is unwittingly the bearer
of falsehood until the truth comes too late to benefit his
master.
Drawing conclusions about Shakespeare's mixture of
nationality-names in Romeo and Juliet is hindered because
so many of the names are in the sources, but the source
of Othello provides only one name, that of Desdemona.
In the Hecatornmithi of Giraldi Cinthio, the other main
characters are called simply the Moor, the Captain, and
the Corporal.
Various attempts have been made to derive
Othello's name from Othoman, Emperor Otho, the line of
Germanic kings named Otho or Otto, and (by metathesis)
John Leo, author of Leo Africanus.
4
Presumably,
Shakespeare was seeking to suggest barbarian associations
for h1s protagonist, but the interesting point for us is
that this non-Italian cr�racter is given a quasi-Italian
name in this play set in Venice and Cyprus, but the name
has Germanic or Turkish roots.
Cassio is also given an
Italia�-sounding name, but the name clearly recalls the
noble Roman Cassius.
Moreover, Cassio's origin is uncleara
Iago in I, i calls him a Florentine, a gentleman in II, i
calls him a Veronese, and Othello in IV, i calls him a
Roman.
Desdemona's name comes from the source, but, with
LOS 145
its origin in daimon, it is more Greek than Italian.
Iago•s name is not Italian but Spanish, recalling Santiago.
As Samuel L. Macey has pointed ou-t ("The Naming of the
Protagonists in Shakespeare's Othello;' N
&
q,n.s. 25 (_1978),
143-145), Iago is appropriate for many reasons• (1) The
Spanish were, for Elizabethan Englishmen, the devils, ·.1ith
"Don Diego" roughly corresponding to Old Nick; (2) Iago
recalls Latin Jacobus or Jacob, the supplanter: (3) Santiago
Matamoros, St. James the Moor-Slayer, was credited with
routing 70,000 ¥oors in a battle at Clavigo in A.D. 843.
Levith reminds us also of the Iago-Jacques-Jakes linkage,
with Jakes being Elizabethan slang for an outhouse.
Another important character, 3rabantio, also has
a n Italian-sounding name which, if analyzed, is not really
Italian.
The Brabant was one of the most important duchies
in the Low C���tries.
It is still the central province of
Belgium, location of the capital city Brussels.
Belgium
is linguistically split between the Walloons, speakers
of Frtl1Ch in the south, and the Flemings, speakers of a
Dutch dialect in the no�th.
Brabant is itself split
between these two linguistic groups, and Brussels is
now (following World \·tar II) officially bilingual.
had a long, proud history.
a
�rabant
From 1365 on, as a result of
charter called the Joyeuse Entr�e, it claimed independence
from all foreign princes.
However,
in
the sixteenth
century, the Low Countries were a political and religious
battleground.
Having been annexed by Spain, with Roman
LOS 146
Catholicism as the official religion, the Low Countries
were struggling to regain their independence, and a
strong Calvinist party was arising.
During the 1570's,
William, Prince of Orange, allied with Protestant France,
succeeded in driving the Spanish out of most of the Low
Countries and in 1582 crowned the Due d'Anjou as Duke
of 3rabant.
In 1584, however, William was shot by a
fanatical Catholic, Balthazar G{rard, and Johan van
Oldenbarnevelt attempted to preserve what William had
won.
Van Oldenbarnevelt supported moderate Protestantism
(especially the Arminian faction) and independence of the
separate Netherlands provinces under a loose confederation.
Although his English supporters, represented by the Earl
of Leicester, would have preferred a more centralized
government, their mutual antagonism to Catholic Spain
resulted in � �riple alliance between England, France,
and the Low Gountries in 1596.
However, Spain overcame,
and in 1598 Philip II of Spain installed the Archduke
Alberv, husband of Philip's daughter Isabella, as Duke
of 3rabant. 5
English sympathies toward Brabant would have been
transferred to its namesake Brabantio, even though this
character is set in opposition to Othello and made to look
a little foolish.
We must remember that Hrahantio had
been Othello's friend before his daue;hter's elopem�nt
and had often invited Othello to his home.
Brabantio's
mixed emotions between his friendship for Othello and
LOS 147
his protectiveness of Desdemona echo the linguistic,
political, and religious divisions within Brabant.
Moreover,
brabantio is losing his daughter, his daimon or vital
spirit, to a Moor, and the Moors were associated with
Spain.
He is aroused to this loss by Iago, a
a Spanish name.
man
with
When called before the Duke, Desdemo!'�a
says that she perceives "a divided duty" (I, iii, 181)
between her father and her husband, possibly another echo
of the divisions within Brabant.
Despite the excessiveness
of his charges against Othello, Brabantio is not a ridiculous
pantaloon, but an influential Senator and a loving father
in real anguish.
Analysis of his name helps us to see
some of these complexities, while it reminds us that once
again we have a Shakespearean play with an Italian setting
and a cast whose names relate to a variety of nationalities.
Shakespeare carried this tendency to an even ereater
extreme in Hamlet, set in Denmark.
Once again, most of the
names are original with Shakespeare (unless they were in
the �ust Ur-Hamlet), since he took only Hamlet (Amletha)
and Gertrude (Gerutha) �rom his sources in Saxo Grammaticus
and Belleforest.
Anglicized.
Even these names have been slightly
Of the other names only four are undoubtedly
Danisha Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (there were courtiers
by these names at the Danish court in 1588)? Osric (there
7
was a Danish King Osrick, ca. 870 A.D.), and Yorick
(derived by Bullough, without further explanation, from
the Danish Jorg).8
The names Voltemand (a Danish courtier)
LOS 148
and Yaughan (apparently an inn-keeper, mentioned by the
First Gravedigger) are possibly Germanic but not tr�ly
DanishJ in fact, Voltemand (voler=steal
French.
+
The name Fortinbras (fort=strong
main=hand) sounds
T
bras=arm) is
obviously French, although its owner is Norwegian, and a
French fencer named Lamound is mentioned in the play.
The
two largest groups of names in the play are Italian and
Latins Bernardo and Francisco are soldiers, Reynaldo is
Polonius• servant, Claudio is Claudius' servant, and
Horatio is Hamlet's friend; Claudius is the usurping
king, Polonius his Prime Minister, Cornelius a courtier,
and Marcellus a soldier.
Completing the list are the
Greek names of Laertes and Ophelia, and the Gravedigger's
English name, Goodman Delver.
One could talk at length about the meanings and
significance of these various names--in fact, several
scholars have previously done so, and even I am guilty-­
but I would like to comment simply on the variety.
How
do we account for a play, entirely set in Denmark,
peopled by characters with Italian, French, and classical
Latin and Greek names?
It is unlikely to be mere·lazi­
ness or carelessness o� Shakespeare's part.
After all,
he rejected the onomastically appropriate name Feng,
given in the sources for Hamlet•s uncle, and substituted
Claudius, together with allusions to Nero so that the
reason for his choice could be detected.
And he may
ws
1�
have transposed the sound of Horwendil (Amletha's father's
name) into the punning Fortinbras, while conflating into
Gertrude the names of Amletha's mother Gerutha and second
wife Hermutrude.
If he rejected Gerwendil (Amletha's
grandfather) and Rorik (King of Denmark) as names because
they might be confused with Gertrude and Yorick, he
could still have selected .�oll, King of Norway in the
source.
And if he went as far afield as Bullough says
to find names for Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Polonius, 9
why didn't Shakespeare try for greater consistency in
naming his characters?
Perhaps he felt that giving his
soldiers Italian names would make them seem a distinct
group, remote from both .his English audience and the
courtiers at Elsinore.
5ut Italians were not considered
particularly military in Shakespeare's time, and besides,
he isn't consistent.
One soldier, Marcellus, is given a
name that puts him in the social class of Claudius,
Polonius, and Cornelius, whereas non-soldiers such as
Reyn��do and Claudio have Italianate names, and Hamlet's
friend Horatio sits uncomfortably between Italy and Rome
in his naming.
If the vanish courtiers bear Latin names
in accordance with the Renaissance custom of Latinizing
scholars' names, how do
let alone Hamlet?
we account for Laertes and Voltemand,
No pattern seems to emerge from this
onomastic chaos.
In the absence of a pattern, one hesitates to assign
any meaning at all to Shakespeare's mixture of nationality-
LOS 150
names in these tragedies.
Although it might be possible
to see particular significance in one or another of the
names in the context of the plays, that does not answer
the question of why Shakespeare deviates from dramatic
convention in not keeping character names consistent with
the setting.
For names like Potpan and Soundpost he
•�'ctS
clearly following convention in assigning comic Redendenamenr
for other names he may have been si�pli�yinE for the sake
of actors' tongues and audiences' ears.
Possibly he just
did not care whether or not the names gave a consistent
sense of plac·e.
As the choral commentary in Henry V tells
us, he was interested not in realism but in imaginative
truth.
Ben Jonson said that Shakespeare was "not of an
age, but for all time," and we could possibly add he was
for all people.
The truth he presented was not limited
to one nation bll.t was equally true for everyone.
Possibly
this is the conclusion to be drawn from Shakespeare's
mixture of nationality-names, that nationality is
ultimately irrelevant to human interaction at the deepest
level.
Frederick M. Burelbach
State University of New York
College at Brockport
LOS 151
NOTES
1 All references to Shakespeare's plays will be to The
Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. Irving Ribner and George
Lyman Kittredge (Waltham,
MAa
Xerox College Publishing, 1971).
2 Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources o f
Shakespeare (London1 Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), vol. I,
pp. 270-275·
J F. N. Robinson, ed., � Poetical Works of Chaucer
(Bostona Houghton Mifflin , 19JJ),
p.
182.
4 f<obert F. Fleissner, "The Moor's Nomenclature," Notes
&
Queries, n.s. 25 ( 1978), 14J.
5 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1981 ed,
and Edward H.
Sugden, ! Topographical Dictionary to the Works of Shakespeare
and his Fellow Dramatists (Manchestera University Press, 1925),
p. 72.
6
Bullough, vol. VII ( 1973), p. 184.
7 Robert Fabyan, � New Chronicles 2f England and France
(Londona F. C. and J. Rivington et al., 1811, repr. of
Pynson•s edition of 15 1�, p. 165.
8 Bullough, VII,
�·
27 n. 2.
9 Bullough, VII, pp. 42-44,
184.
LOS
152
MR. HARTHOUSE Dl'TING AT THE BOUNDERBYS1